Nell Scovell Isn't One of the Boys

And that's a great thing.

By
Beejoli Shah

Mar 27, 2018

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Nell Scovell was the first staff writer for Spymagazine. She was the second woman to write an episode of "The Simpsons." She created and ran the writers’ room for "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," and has worked on everything from "Murphy Brown," "Coach," and "Monk" to "Newhart" and "Late Show with David Letterman." She even helped former President Barack Obama take a dig at Matt Damon’s performance in "The Adjustment Bureau" at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Simply put, Scovell is one of the most qualified, hilarious, badass writers in the business — and yet, she still has to fight her way into writers’ rooms and producer credits, thanks to a system that remains stacked against women.

It’s a cause Scovell has been championing for decades. In 2009, after news of David Letterman’s in-house affairs broke, Scovell penned a damning Vanity Fair essay about the sexually-charged boys’ club atmosphere at "Late Show"and the lack of women — at the time, a grand total of zero — in any of the primetime late night writers’ rooms. In 2013, she co-authored "Lean In"with Sheryl Sandberg. And now, Scovell has penned her own story of persistence with her second book, "Just the Funny Parts…And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking into the Hollywood Boys’ Club"(Dey Street Books, March 20).

Earlier this month, Scovell and I chatted about her riotously funny new book, writers’ room dynamics, and why she’s not done fighting the good fight for equality in entertainment.

I think this book is so brave, and so necessary. It’s also a cause you’ve been raising awareness of for almost a decade now. What brought you to this point?

When I first decided to speak out about late night television and gender discrimination, one of the calculations I made was to look at my colleagues who had come out of ["The David Letterman Show"] — and I placed in the top ten, in the success department. I created a show, I directed movies. I had branched out in lots of different ways. It was really important that when I spoke out, no one could accuse me of being bitter, of complaining that I was blaming them because I had not been successful.

Sarah Silverman was once asked what advice she would give women in comedy, and she said, "Be undeniable." And I think there's a lot of truth to that, but it also made me sad. Men just have to be confident. They have to be solid. They have to have potential. Yet women have to be undeniable? I mean, that is such a high bar.

There are very few comedy prodigies. I think Albert Brooks is considered one of the few, who, at 16, was famously making Carl Reiner laugh. But for the most part, you learn it. It’s a craft. One of the reasons I care so much about [fighting for equality in] those late night jobs is they're entries to entire careers. That first-level job, when you're working on a top ten list every day, it's like comedy writing 101. You have 45 minutes to come up with all the jokes you can think of on a topic. That experience makes you a much stronger writer. So when you shove women out of those jobs, you also shut them out of the learning process.

You were already staffed on a sitcom when you first got the offer from "Late Show" in 1990. Did that help prepare you for working in a writers’ room that was all men? Did it help prepare you for having to work within the system?

It was an adjustment. It was like working in Versailles. You had to figure out the factions, and I'm not good at all when it comes to office politics. It was a hard job because I loved the work, and I loved the writing, and I loved the boys, and you can go down and watch Elvis Costello do a set in rehearsal, or Randy Travis. It's exciting! I walked into 30 Rock every day, long before Liz Lemon.

When writing for TV is done well, it's wonderful. Because you're in a room and it's writing as a team sport and you're using all the strengths of everyone in the room to make the funniest script you can. That's the ideal. Most of the time, though, it's every man for himself. At "Letterman," it really was mostly every man [for himself], so I didn't stick around. I was fortunate in that I had this other skill set, of writing for sitcoms. So I thought I could [eventually] get back in.

Advocating for yourself is a large theme in the book. After "Late Show"you worked on "Murphy Brown"for a few seasons. In the book, you mention leaving the "Murphy"writing staff a few years later, when they hired an external male showrunner over any of the other three upper level producers on staff, including yourself. Was that a harder show to walk away from?

Oh, that was harder. One of the things that was so great was, "Murphy Brown"was my first job where the split was 40 percent women and 60 percent men [in the writers’ room]. So we were pretty close to equal, and of course, our star was a female. It was the best functioning room I've ever been in. And I don't think that's a coincidence! I think we reflected the world and it's also the only show I've worked on however many years later, 25 years later — we're all still friends.

With the "Murphy"writing room being almost equal in gender parity, did it feel like the needle was beginning to move?

Oh, sure! When I went to the Emmys in 1990, three-and-a-half of the five shows nominated for Best Comedy Series had been created by women. I thought that the problem was on its way to being solved.

It must have been frustrating to not see much systemic change over the intervening two decades.

It's a slow-motion car wreck. It's awful. It was hard on a personal level, when I really struggled after 40 to get hired. And it's also difficult on a larger level, when you're watching shows about "desperate housewives" being created by men.

[For a while,] I couldn't even get in the room. If I had pitched my stories and they said, "Ehhh, we're going in a different direction," sure. I get that. But what frustrates me is when you won't even let women in the door, or people of color in the door. You can't succeed when you're not allowed to participate.

One of the things that struck me most in the book, aside from the death by a thousand patriarchal paper cuts, was the narrative of finding joy and fulfillment in the different forms that a career path and ambition can take. A lot of these sorts of stories tend to focus on young wunderkinds, so it’s interesting to see someone talk about the long road.

When you're in it, it's terrible. I would always get frustrated at myself because eventually, in my case, I did get hired again, and I would look back and say, "Why didn't I make better use of that time?" I could have traveled, I could have enjoyed myself. I was always pushing myself, and filled with [the] anxiety of, "Is this it?" So the down times were always filled with anxiety.

One of the interesting parts of writing the memoir was that I hadn't realized how much female executives had helped me. Chris Sanagustin, Nina Tassler, and Susanne Daniels all championed me. And if they hadn't, I probably would have been gone.

You've been pushing for gender equality and racial equality in writing rooms since before #MeToo, since before "Lean In." Is there ever a point where it just gets frustrating that the path towards progress is so non-linear?

One of the marks of my personality is that I'm not a person who sits back and feels satisfied. So when I find out that there are now three women working on ["The Late Show with Stephen] Colbert," out of however many — and yes, we’re up from one, and two, and now it's three. [But] I still want equality. I don't go, "Well that's fantastic!" I say, "Well how about adding a fourth?"

Knowing what you know now, how does a writer who isn’t a straight, white male succeed in a system that hasn’t changed its ways since before "Murphy Brown"?

I think one of the greatest positive changes that came from "Lean In" was Sheryl's idea of women supporting other women. And obviously that had been around before, the same as that quote from Madeleine Albright about a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other. What I loved about Sheryl's take was — you're going to lift each other up. Do it out of joy. Do it because it's smart. Don't do it because women must help other women. But because you will lift each other up.

That's all great, but I actually think now, we're in a period where men need to step up. If I were going to write a sequel to "Lean In," it would be called "Make Room," directed at men. Because we can lean in all we want, [but] if they won't pull another chair up to the table, you can't sit at it.

Specifically, men need to share their salaries with their colleagues and their friends. We don't know if we're making parity or not. And that could be a real game changer. They need to be more generous about giving credit for ideas and making it clear that when someone in the room who’s not a straight, white male comes up with the fix for the season, that that isn't conveniently forgotten. And finally, for the men in leadership positions, they just need to hire more women and people of color.

Beejoli Shah writes about California’s biggest industries: entertainment, cannabis, and technology. She is also a contributing editor at Pacific Standard.

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